


The River

by shedrovemehere



Category: Professional Wrestling, 新日本プロレス | New Japan Pro-Wrestling
Genre: A real message about loving our planet, Gen, Los Ingoberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnables! DE! JA! PON!, Magic and shit, reference to child death, weird fantasy world AU... thing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 22:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12263661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shedrovemehere/pseuds/shedrovemehere
Summary: When the bird finished, Hiromu was worried that he had been imagining it. Maybe mama was right. He did love imagining things; maybe the world was boring enough that he needed to fill it with more stories. He thanked the bird for the story, and then immediately felt stupid. The bird looked at him for a moment, and flitted away. It was a beautiful yellow bird.But once he knew how to listen to the bird’s storysong, he found it easier to hear one told by the crashing rocks in the river. Soon he could hear the storysongs of the frogs at night, and even of the fire itself, when other people weren’t talking. It was thrilling: he had never felt like he had so many friends.





	The River

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for is for the “[31 Little Wrestling Fics](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/31-little-wrestling-fics)” Challenge! Unsurprisingly for those familiar with my writing, this is in no way “little.” These were my prompts:
> 
> 42\. “It was always how the story was meant to play out.”  
> 6\. Empty church  
> 33\. You’ve never met someone with your same gift…Until now  
> 27\. Fae royalty
> 
> This story takes great inspiration from Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “[By the Waters of Babylon](http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Outings/RosemountGhosts/Babylon.htm)”, which you should absolutely read sometime because when I read it in 9th grade I thought it was possibly the best fucking thing I’d ever read, and I still think it’s really really awesome. The first line is a tribute to that story, which definitely helped shape me as a writer. Also, oddly, this story takes inspiration from [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH5Ka4TG6tg), which for reasons I still cannot articulate, makes me very teary-eyed whenever I watch it.

* * *

It was forbidden to go down to the river. It had been and would always be, as far as Hiromu knew. Mama said it was because children could fall into the river and hit their heads on the rocks, and they’d be taken away and never get to play with their brothers and sisters again. But Hiromu was never afraid of the river, never. Rivers were magical places where the bounds of reality were far more flexible than they were in the village, or the field, or in the city. Besides, Hiromu wasn’t scared, because he was ten now. He told himself a story about how he had fallen in the river before, when he was very small. He told his mother this, he told her the story of feeling his body being carried away by the current, and the swish of water over rocks was like music. He always told her he wanted to hear the music again, but she told him the only music he should hear were the storysongs people told at night. She told him that he was very imaginative, a special boy, but that his stories would frighten other children, and make the adults think he was stupid. 

And anyway, storysongs must be told by fires, it was the rule. Light and warmth were the only things that kept people separate from the forest and fields and storms. And storysongs were powerful and could not be shared with the forest or the rivers or the skies or the sea. Mama and nana said it was because humans could not share the secrets of their dominion over the land and the water and the animals, or else all of those would be destroyed. But forest, rivers, skies, seas; all of these things, Hiromu knew, could eat up human power without really even noticing. He had felt it in the river, and he was not afraid. 

It was forbidden to go to the river, but it was the only place Hiromu ever felt calm. He tried to bring his friends and his sister to the river with him, but they were afraid. He told them not to be afraid; he told them if they fell in, they wouldn’t get hurt, the songs would heal them. They all ran away, anyway. His sister protected him, and didn’t tell mama, but she would never go to the river with him again. He eventually got used to going by himself, finishing his chores and sneaking to hear the river’s music again. Hiromu didn’t believe that music was something only for fires, only for people, because he could hear it in the trees and after all, didn’t birds have music before people? Why would music be dangerous? 

The best part about the music that wasn’t orderly and reserved for fires, was that Hiromu could hear storysongs in it, too. He had once thought that everyone could hear the storysongs when wind blew through the trees, when birds sang, when the rain fell. But mama and nana told him, “that is just rain, Hiromu. Birds don’t know any stories.” For a long time he told himself he was imagining the songs, and then once, when he sat by the river, a yellow bird landed on a branch that overhung one of the river’s deep pools. It felt like the bird was singing right to him, and as he watched, as he focused on the bird’s song, he suddenly could hear the story in it. 

This bird’s storysong was sad; it was about people who had brought storysongs outside of the fires, and with that power they poisoned the sea for a thousand years. They didn’t mean to poison the sea, but it was a consequence of being so careless with their storysongs. The bird’s song was about how birds fell out of the sky when the sea was poison. Birds that are alive now, according to the song, carry the story with them as a warning. But people can’t hear it. It made Hiromu so sad to think that the birds were gently warning people, and people would never know, even sometimes get annoyed when the birds sang too early in the morning.

When the bird finished, Hiromu was worried that he had been imagining it. Maybe mama was right. He _did_ love imagining things; maybe the world was boring enough that he needed to fill it with more stories. He thanked the bird for the story, and then immediately felt stupid. The bird looked at him for a moment, and flitted away. It was a beautiful yellow bird. 

But once he knew how to listen to the bird’s storysong, he found it easier to hear one told by the crashing rocks in the river. Soon he could hear the storysongs of the frogs at night, and even of the fire itself, when other people weren’t talking. It was thrilling: he had never felt like he had so many friends. The wind through the brambles told him a story about a wild boy who wore a mask made of reeds, to look like a snake. That boy had learned to hear the stories, a long time ago, but it had been a very long time since a person could hear the storysongs that were now everywhere around Hiromu. He felt special, and now the peace he felt near the river, he could feel anytime the natural noises of the world made themselves known. 

The stories weren’t always about legendary events. Sometimes they were stories about the adventures of the animals or plants telling them, just their normal lives, what they had seen in their travels, or what they had learned. Some animals, like birds and dogs and cats, loved telling stories about people, and of course Hiromu liked the ones about people the best. There was one about two warriors who fought each other until they were so skilled that no other warriors could touch them. Hiromu’s favorite was about a boy who loved a cat and a dragon. There was a scary one about strange pale men with strange weapons, who tried to take over a kingdom. A sweet one about an angel and a star who fell in love. A strong king who left his life behind to find out if there was anything else, beyond this island. A man who betrayed someone he loved, and became a demon. A shining prince who defended his kingdom against a spoiled prince, a fallen angel, and the leader of a wicked, deceitful army. 

But there was one storysong that he heard from the forest that felt familiar, that’d he’d also heard around the night fires. It was the one about the ancient people who learned to use magic to hurt each other. Even today, the rubble of their primitive cities felt haunted and ugly, and it was forbidden to research the crude magics they’d used to cause pain to one another. No one could say why people would hurt each other like that. Some stories said there were too many people. Some stories blamed the same storysongs that had poisoned the sea. One bush of flowers and bees told Hiromu that the people fought over something they were tricked into thinking was valuable, something that itself was an evil magic. Some versions of the story even said that maybe there had been other islands in the sea, but others said their island was always the only one. It was always different, but it was always a hopelessly sad story. 

That’s why he started spending even more time away from the village, as much as he could manage, listening as much as he could, until he felt more at home outside the walls than in them. The storysongs by the fires were mostly about tragic battles, or what happened to children who broke the rules, or which plants were poisonous. The animals and plants and water, though, their stories were about adventure, angels and demons, princes, kings, magic and heroes. People who could befriend animals, and powerful spirits who could even _turn into_ animals. And each new sound was a different storysong or a new version of one he’d heard before. He loved them much more than the storysongs he’d heard at the night fires his whole life.  When Hiromu told these stories to his friends, they were amazed; no one had ever heard of stories like these before, and they told him how clever he was, and how smart to think of so many stories. He learned quickly not to tell them that he had heard them from a bird, from a tree, from ants, a rock, or a fish. They didn’t believe him, and they laughed at him. Eventually, he stopped telling the stories altogether, because he didn’t like taking credit for the things that frogs and lakes and grass fields knew. He had never been anywhere, not enough to know so many stories. 

Mama heard him though, and his sister and brother worried about him, when he said that bees told him stories, or that he learned the truth about certain red berries from some swishing grass. The grass wasn’t wrong: the red berries were safe to eat and so, so delicious. But mama and his sister and brother wanted to protect Hiromu. They kept him inside the house all the time, and the silence was maddening. He’d grown very used to the background noise of comforting stories, of all the things that eagerly wanted to share with him what they knew. He felt anxious; like he was missing storysongs he might never hear again, when there was a thunderstorm, or when the wind howled at night. What if it never happened like that again? He strained to hear, but his family was always watching and they only worried more when he acted like that.

One night, there was a terrible lightning storm. The trees in the forest, Hiromu could see from his window, shivered and swayed like they could move on their own, as though they were possessed. When the lightning flashed, the image of contorted trees in the split second of blinding, eerie light was etched on the back of his eyes. He could hear terrible stories in the thunder, but he knew he needed to listen, because no one else even knew they were being told. A sickening crack of lightning hit a tree that was right in the center of Hiromu’s field of vision. The loud creak of the tree being wrenched in two, the buzz of the lightning, the oddly soft settling sounds of leaves hitting the ground, the flames that tried to lick around where the lighting struck, but were extinguished by the heavy rain—all of these told stories, stories he could barely hear through the window. Hiromu was overwhelmed with the knowledge that he might never get to hear such stories again. He panicked, and sat down in front of the window, hugging his knees to his chest and involuntarily letting out a low wailing sound. Mama ran into the room to hold him, thinking he had been frightened by the lightning striking the tree. 

As she hugged him, over her shoulder, he saw a huge snake—impossibly iridescent, flashing deep purple and blue and green—emerge from the tree where the lightning had struck. Unmistakably, the snake locked its eyes on Hiromu’s, and Hiromu wasn’t afraid. The snake kept watching Hiromu as it spun around itself, coiling tightly in a beautiful twirling motion, illuminating the brilliant colors of its skin in the pale light from the houses. It kept its eyes locked to Hiromu’s, and nimbly, deftly, twisted itself around a fallen branch from the tree, hidden in the leaves. It peeked its head out one final time, and Hiromu could see its long tongue tasting the stormy air before it hid its head back in the leaves. All of this took just a few moments, and mama was pleased that Hiromu had stopped crying. He told her he was sleepy, and when she left, he started planning. He knew he had to find the snake. 

As soon as he was sure that mama and his brother and sister were asleep, he crept into the kitchen where the low ashes of the hearth fire still glowed soft orange. The rain had slowed considerably, but every so often a drop would make its way down the chimney, hitting the embers making a popping, hissing sound. These were like small stories themselves, and Hiromu felt they were urging him on, reinforcing his notion that he had to find the snake. He grabbed some rice balls, some slices of dried fish, two plums, a clay jug for water, a small bag to hold all of them, and a dry hat and overcoat. He found his pocket knife and his pair of shoes with the fewest holes, and slowly, quietly, as patiently as he could, slipped out the door. 

He realized that he didn’t know if he’d ever come home, because he didn’t really know where he was going. A pang of sadness clutched his heart, and he turned to look at the door to the house, wondering if he was doing the right thing. After a moment, he ran back over to the door, and hastily carved the face of a cat into its frame, to watch over his family. Cats, more than any other animal or thing in nature, had the best command of both their own storysong language, and the ways that people spoke. They could move most swiftly and seamlessly within the world of people and the storysong world that people could not hear, so Hiromu considered them the very best protectors. Cats, of course, agreed with him. He ran his fingers over the face of the cat he’d just scratched into the soft, worn wood of the door, and silently asked all cats to love his brother, sister, and mother as much as they possibly could. Then he turned and ran toward the tree, ducking behind some of its fallen branches to remain out of sight of the house. 

He heard the soft swish of wet leaves, and the unmistakeable hiss of a snake, very close by. Then, silence, except for the soft drops of rain falling from the leaves of nearby trees onto the ground. He could not see the snake, and he recalled a storysong he’d heard by the night fires, of snakes luring children away from their families, to kidnap them for the amusement of the forest sprites. The memory did not dissuade him though, like his beloved cats, he thought, he was far too curious to leave this thing alone now. 

As he scanned around him, he saw a flash of purple-green in the distance, weaving among the trees. Hiromu had played in these woods all his life, and luckily he knew each root and rock very well, from tripping over each one dozens of times. He ran as fast as he could in the direction of the snake, and always the snake stayed far ahead of him, always only discernible by the occasional glints of moonlight off its smooth skin. He ran and ran, heedless of direction other than following the snake. He came up over a ridge, and realized he had made it to the river, and the snake was nowhere to be seen. Breathless, he made his way down to the river, which despite the recent storms was running at a slow trickle here. 

He bent down to fill his jug with water from the river, and he splashed some water on his face, too. As he waited for his jug to fill, he noticed green and purple flashes reflected on the water, and he knew the snake must be behind him. Maybe the snake really _had_ wanted to kidnap him for the forest sprites. He turned slowly, so as not to frighten the snake, but when he looked, there was nothing. Then, a rustling sound, and from behind a fallen tree slowly, meekly crawled a boy, smaller than Hiromu but probably about the same age. He was wearing tattered brown clothing, and a mask that made him look like he had the face of a snake.

The boy reached for Hiromu’s hand, but Hiromu was suddenly frightened. Where had the boy come from? Hiromu knew every boy in his village and all the villages close by, and he had never seen this boy before, small and slight and muscular, with hair the gold color of summer grasses. Hiromu had never seen hair like that before.

“Hiromu,” the boy said, and his voice sounded like that of a normal boy. 

“How do you know who I am?” Hiromu remembered the story of the boy with the snake mask… 

“The river has been telling me stories about you for years! I’m so happy to meet you! I’ve been so lonely!” The boy was overjoyed, hopping up and down and grabbing Hiromu’s wrist in excitement. 

“You hear the river stories?” Hiromu wanted to believe him. As much as the storysongs of the natural world kept him company, he couldn’t really talk back to them. 

“Oh yes!” the boy said. “And the bee songs, and the tree songs, and the birds, and cats, and deer! And grasses and roses!” 

Hiromu was wary, and still had the snake story in the back of his mind (this boy had not taken his snake mask off, after all). He stared at the small boy, who was now bouncing excitedly from one foot to another. 

“Come on!” the boy smiled behind his mask, lips looking black in the darkness. He tugged Hiromu’s wrist, and casting a nervous glance over his shoulder, Hiromu reluctantly followed the boy. 

The boy sang a little song to himself as he walked, and Hiromu had no real choice but to continue following this strange person, as he was now far further into the forest than he could even fathom. The stories did not make it seem this big, perhaps because no one had ever been this far. A few minutes into their walk, the boy turned to Hiromu, still walking, and asked, “so! Please tell me what your favorite storysong is! It’s been so long and I have no one to talk about them with!” 

Hiromu considered it for a moment, but had an idea that might help him learn more about this child. “I have a lot of them, and I’m still learning how to hear them. Which one is your favorite?” 

“Oh!” the boy was so excited to be asked the question. “You must be worried I’m lying to you, I understand.” He didn’t seem offended at all. “I think my favorite is a sad one. But it’s my favorite because it’s the first one I ever heard: the one about the poison sea. Do you know that one?” 

Hiromu stared. “Yes.” He didn’t know what else to say. 

“I've heard it from a few birds over the years, but a yellow bird told it best.”

Hiromu was silent.

“You met the yellow bird too! You heard it from the yellow bird first, didn’t you? You’re so lucky! That’s the best version. I mean, best as in the best story. It’s also the saddest version.”

Hiromu opened his mouth to speak, but only managed, “yellow bird.”

The boy was not ruffled by this. “Yes! Oh, I am so happy that someone else has heard the stories, and _can_ hear the stories. We will have to protect people, you know.”

Hiromu nodded, not really sure what that meant. His brain was still struggling to process it all: he was not crazy. Or at least, if he _was_ , so was this boy. Which he supposed was possible. But someone else had heard the stories, and felt the incredible calm and responsibility that comes with knowing the secrets of all the things around you. “My favorite is the one about the boy who loved a dragon and a cat,” he said quietly. It wasn’t as epic as the ones about angels and princes, but it definitely _was_ his favorite.

The boy was gleeful, even beneath his mask Hiromu could see it. “I love that one! I wish I could be friends with the boy in the story.” He turned and continued following the river. Then, without turning around, he said “did you hear the one about the boy who died in the river, and the forest sprites saw him and knew that he was a very important and special boy, so they brought him back to life?”

“I never heard that one,” Hiromu said. “I thought the forest sprites were mean.” 

“Oh no!” the boy said. “I mean, they are sometimes, but they like people who know the storysongs.”

Hiromu had thought they were getting somewhere, but was now utterly confused again. Did this boy somehow know forest sprites personally? And up until about an hour ago, Hiromu had thought _he_ was the only person who knew the nature storysongs. As it was, there was now him and this boy. That’s not very many people for the forest sprites to like. As far as Hiromu knew, forest sprites were just night fire creatures, made up to caution children against playing with snakes, not real beings with powers. He continued the muddy trudge in silence.

They walked for a very long time, tracing a path along the river much much further than Hiromu had ever gone, or had ever heard of anyone going. Finally, they came to what had once been a clearing, evidenced only by the smaller trees and plants growing encircled by massive, ancient trees with trunks as thick as houses. In the middle of the clearing, tall and graceful, was a huge ruin, made of delicate arches that had mostly crumbled to dust long ago, although some were still visible. The boy walked blithely toward the ivy-covered structure, and Hiromu froze. He had never seen one of these before, but he thought he knew what it was… “We can’t go in there! Are you crazy? That’s a place of the ancients, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! Oh Hiromu, you’ve never seen one!” The boy said this as though it were commonplace to see one of these enormous stone structures as tall as trees, and as wide as two rivers. Hiromu did not know a single person who had ever seen one. The storysongs made it sound like most people died immediately upon entering one of these ruins. “This one is so beautiful!”

As they got closer, Hiromu could see that the ancients had built this building with incredible care—stones laid thoughtfully and hewn uniformly. Hiromu had thought that the ancients only had primitive technologies, but this cut stone looked much more precise than anything he’d seen before. They walked around the outside of the structure, and though it was mostly collapsed, Hiromu could see that it had once come to a point at the top, where the roof was. There was nothing left of the windows, but they too were uniform and carefully cut into the stone. The boys came around to another side of the ruin, and there was a wide opening that must have once been an entryway. The windows here were at eye-level, and Hiromu stared in awe at the tiny shards of colorful jewels embedded in the windows. Most of the jewels were long since gone, but it was possible to make out where many individual different colored pieces had once been part of this window. He’d never seen anything like it, and again he froze, open-mouthed. 

The boy seemed to understand. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The ancients weren’t as dumb as everybody thinks.” He motioned for Hiromu to follow him into what had once been a very grand building, much larger than any Hiromu had ever seen. Inside was mostly very empty, with a long aisle running down the center toward a raised platform at the end, made of what looked like polished stone. But it wasn’t a type of stone Hiromu had ever seen before; it was cream-colored with swirls and veins of black, gold, and red. At the back was the remains of a table made of that same stone. The boy gently put an arm in front of Hiromu, motioning for him to stop, and stay quiet.

Everything was still for a moment; the remains of the structure like ribs towering high above them, creating a fine surface for ivy to cling to, but still allowing a view of the sky, which, although the stars were still visible, was beginning to turn the first shades of morning-pink. This silence, Hiromu noticed, wasn’t horrible like the silence of inside the house. This silence was its own kind of storysong, sad and faint and regretful. After several long moments, clacking sounds echoed through the ruin, softly reverberating off the white platform and the walls. Shortly, Hiromu could see a huge, graceful deer, a black buck with gently arching horns that matched the arches of the structure above them. The deer looked muscular under the sheen of its black coat; deadly and powerful, but its eyes were calm. Its hooves clopped onto the white stone, and this too was a storysong, one of loss, of thousands and thousands of deaths, and then of reclamation. Hiromu drew in a breath at the beauty of the animal, but also of the unfathomable suffering in the storysong of its hooves on the smooth stone. Hiromu looked over at the boy next to him, who was smiling peacefully.

When he looked back, instead of the huge deer, there was a man standing there, tall and dressed all in black, muscular and powerful, but with quiet eyes, and hair that stood up like the antlers of the deer. He smiled at Hiromu and the boy next to him. Then from the outer reaches of the ruin came another man, stocky and fierce-looking, also in black but with drapes of woven lavender covering his shoulders. He joined the first man on the platform, and then together they looked behind them, watching a man come out from the center of the platform, eyes fixed on Hiromu. Also dressed in black, his shining crow-feather cape had tiny pieces of the jewels Hiromu had seen in the windows, red and white, and scattered across the iridescent black like stardust. He came to join the first two men on the front of the stage, motioning the boys forward. 

Hiromu was frightened, but before he could even hesitate, the man in the crow-feather cape held his palm up toward Hiromu. “Be calm. It’s okay,” he said, and Hiromu believed him. He and the boy approached the three men, who were all smiling excitedly at Hiromu. From his robes, the stocky man drew a circlet made of dried red berries, and placed it around Hiromu’s head. The circlet fit perfectly, and it had two points on it that looked as if they were meant to mimic cat ears. Hiromu felt the way he’d felt when he’d hit his head on the rock, when he fell into the river all those years ago: lightheaded, floating, but unafraid. 

The boy next to Hiromu couldn’t contain his excitement. “We’re so happy you’re home, Hiromu! I bet you didn’t think forest sprites had so many muscles!” 

Hiromu stared at him, then back to the three imposing men, who were chuckling softly at the golden-haired boy in the snake mask. They seemed to not be joking at all. “Forest sprites?” Somehow, he felt he’d always known in his heart that they were real.

“The _king_ of the forest sprites,” the snake-mask boy said proudly.

Hiromu was stunned. “I… I’m sorry… I didn’t know.”

The king looked at him kindly. “Of course you didn’t. We didn’t want you to know, until now, until you could hear the storysongs all around. And now you do. And you’re home.”

Hiromu was pretty sure he had carved a cat on the door to his home earlier. He was confused.

“Did you hear the storysong about the two boys who died in the river, and the king of the forest sprites saved them, because they were special boys? Boys who could hear the storysongs and save all people from what happened to the ancients when they poisoned the sea and melted all the ice in the world, and murdered each other with horrible magic?”

Hiromu nodded a little. “I… I never heard the second part. About saving all people.”

“Oh,” the forest sprite king laughed a little, “I just added that part of the storysong, to be told from now on.”

“You… just added it… because I showed up here?” Hiromu looked over at the snake-mask boy, who was beaming through his mask.

“Oh no,” the king said. “I’ve been waiting to add it for a long time. You are part of my court now.” He nodded at the two men and the snake-mask boy. “This—“ he gestured as though to the entire forest and everything in it— “it was always how the story was meant to play out. And now all five of us are here.” The forest sprite king raised his fist in the air, and said: “Sanada.” The man in all black joined him with his fist in the air. “Evil,” and now the man with the purple cape added his fist. “Bushi,” the snake-mask boy excitedly raised his fist high, and the other three brought their fists down to join his. The forest sprite king looked kindly at Hiromu. “Hiromu.”

Hiromu hesitated, but just for a moment. He joined his fist with the others, and felt as calm and tranquil as he had the first time he’d understood storysongs.

The forest sprite king finished, “and Naito,” gesturing to himself. He whispered some words only he could hear, and Hiromu felt a strange and terrifying power flow through his fist into the rest of his body. He closed his eyes as he tried to bear it without falling over. When he opened them again, they all lowered their fists, and hugged him all at once. “Welcome home,” the forest sprite king said. “We have so much work to do.”

* * *

* * *

She didn’t cry, most days, but some days, she permitted herself a little madness. It was understandable, after losing a son, especially with so much uncertainty. Today, it was a morning after a terrible storm, just like the morning she found her boy had disappeared. She had no idea what possessed her, but she left her son and daughter with her mother, touched the cat carving on the door as she did whenever she left the house, and furtively glancing around her, hurried out the village walls. 

She hadn’t been down to the river since that terrifying day long ago, and when she had gone prior to that, she’d never gone alone, and never so close. As she approached it, she was surprised to see it was running slow and tranquil, despite the fierce rains of the night before. It didn’t look so scary, like this. It didn’t look like a place that should be forbidden. She felt close to him here; as much as she hated that he went to the river, she knew he felt a connection to it after she’d fished him out of it that horrible day, miraculously still breathing. She secretly admired his defiance and the strength he had to find comfort in this place. She sat down on a rock near the river’s edge, and focused on the soft babbling sound of the water flowing over smooth rocks. It sounded almost like a song, and she found herself lulled by it, and closed her eyes to listen. 

She was startled when she felt something brush her leg, and before she knew what was happening, a small black cat had jumped into her lap, purring loudly and rubbing its face against her hands. She noticed the cat must belong to someone, as it was wearing a collar of woven, dried red berries. She felt a rush of calm familiarity, and the cat curled up in her lap, making sure to maintain contact with her hands, purring louder and louder. For the first time since her boy had gone missing, she felt at peace, optimistic about the future. For the first time, she felt no anxious drive to keep moving. There was nowhere she wanted to be more than next to the gently rushing river, stroking the cheeks of this sweet cat, whose purr, like the river, sounded almost like a song.  



End file.
